Inverse
by trufflemores
Summary: 3.17. Cindy's former partner was a speedster.


Alex was four months younger and the chip in Cindy's armor.

They worked well together. He was slow and methodical; he cased their scenes carefully. She was wild, trusting her gut. She walked through fire while he placed his feet carefully on top of the ice. In the field, it paid to have both extremes.

Irony killed him; the one rash decision he ever made was for her. A metahuman threw an innocuous metal cube at them and Alex rushed it, caught it, and imploded with it. There was no body to bury. One moment Alex was alive and shouting at her to watch out, and the next he was a disarticulated pile of particles, his scorched jacket crushed into an unrecognizable heap where he had been standing.

Cindy stared at the remains of her partner of six years and screamed his name. He didn't come back, but the sound waves her scream unintentionally caused had a dire effect: they shattered the meta's ribcage. The meta hit the pavement hard, bleeding out. Ignoring him, Cindy rushed towards Alex's still-smouldering jacket, seizing it and desperately trying to find him.

From the flickering darkness, a menacing presence emerged, a tall shadowy figure in a black tripolymer suit. She recoiled, shaking and sobbing, because she had to go back, she had to get him, but she couldn't face the Black Flash alone. No one could face the Black Flash and survive. When she dared to step back into the darkness, she saw the Black Flash kneel, lifting a lifeless Alex into its arms, and vanish, leaving her alone in the Speed-storm. She tried to follow, but she couldn't move.

The Speed Force didn't give Alex back.

Returning to her own present, Cindy heard the meta moan in agony on the pavement and picked up on the distant scream of sirens. Let the police handle him, she thought, unafraid that he was dying. She clutched Alex's cooling jacket to her chest and conjured a portal, crawling through it and emerging in a clean, poorly-lit room. It was an empty apartment: their headquarters, their _home_. She held the cold fabric to her face and begged the Speed Force to give him back, but nothing changed.

Alex was the warmth in the wood and the steadiness in her step, the target she could pitch her own kind of lightning at that he could duck and pivot and even occasionally return with joyful ease. An early silver fox, he stood five-ten and packed more muscle in those broad shoulders than his gentle hugs would suggest, benching tremendous weights in the field. He could outrun her in his sleep and had inquisitive brown eyes and a tendency to rest his elbows on the table so he could lean in, paying attention, listening-close.

He was twenty-six-years-old when he died.

Standing under a crisp night sky on Earth-1, Cindy lingers outside Central City and draws in a deep breath, aching for one of those stars to be him. She didn't come here to pine, to recover what she lost, but she can't smother the tiny candle of hope in her chest that he might be here. Alive. Somewhere. She's already looked and so far she's found that Alexander Sharp doesn't exist here. He's a memory from another time, a living person in another place. But she can't stop hoping, can't stop listening for that unique Speed signature she knows.

He's been dead for three years and it still hurts like hell.

Clenching her fists, she exhales, trying to keep her emotions at bay. It was easier when she didn't have to see speedsters, although Alex's friend - the "Accelerated Man" - was still an irregular guest in her life. It was easy with him because A.M. didn't have a Speed signature, and his lightning was the wrong color, and he shared an inter- rather than intra-species relationship with Alex. He was an anomaly, a "false" speedster, and Alex loved him for it. Cindy liked him better After Alex because he didn't make her think of Alex any more than sunrise, or crisp blue waters, or the stir of grass in a passing breeze.

On Earth-1, it's a painfully different story. Within twenty-four hours she has met not one but _three_ speedsters, true-blue-speedsters that have their own unique signatures, project their own warmth, and draw her into each of their own emotional spirals with their mercurial Speed auras. Her impulse to back off is overridden by an aching rage, a desire to fling her sound waves at a target. She leashes the urge until they stand in her way, and then she lets them feel her fury.

With speedsters, she knows that in a fight it isn't about how fast you are; it's about how hard you hit. One good punch is all it takes. Learning Alex's Speed signature meant she was primed to read Barry's, Wally's, and Jesse's. On her own Earth, she could have knocked out their connection to the Speed Force in one fell swoop; on theirs, her aim is compromised by the differences in frequencies. She still rocks them back on their heels, disorienting and dissuading them, but it takes time to settle in. It gives them a chance to win.

But it isn't the speedsters who beat her; it's Vibe.

Cisco is only twenty-four-years-old when they meet, five years younger and showing it. His boyish charm makes him hard to throw a punch at, but it also invites retaliation, hit-me-with-your-best-shot. She gladly obliges. Savoring the opportunity to assert her authority, she strives simultaneously to get close enough to punch while keeping as much distance as she can between them.

With speedsters, it's a challenge to keep emotional distance because their Speed spills over, infectious and prominent, but with Cisco it's even worse because there is no wall between them. They understand each other immediately, intuitively. Being able to read another human being without saying a single word is a powerful sensation, like telepathy refined, a handshake that lingers for hours, telling more than a first impression ever could. She dwells on it after her first encounter and almost looks forward to taking him off the map, if only because she can't stand to be this open with him, to have no walls between them.

Then he beats her and she thinks, _I die with honor._ She makes the statement - _my life is yours_ \- without a quiver, even though she can't quite look at him. _Make this quick._

He quickly dissuades, saying instead, "We don't roll like that here" as he helps her up.

It's the mercy she didn't ask for, mercy Alex deserved, a second chance from the universe.

Sitting on the grass now, Cindy lies down and crosses her arms underneath her head. Contemplating. She could go home, except now she can't, because she didn't kill H.R. like she said, and maybe she should have. But Cisco didn't kill her either, and maybe _he_ should have, and around and around they go.

"What do the stars look like on Earth-19?" speak-of-the-devil asks.

Cindy grimaces. "I don't want to talk," she tells him bluntly.

He sits beside her, lying down. "Okay," is all he says, folding his hands on his belly, and keeping his word.

Closing her eyes, Cindy can still feel the conversation. The apology, the curiosity, the respect all at once. _I've lost people close to me,_ his kinetic grieving tells her, _but I've never lost an Alex._

He doesn't even know Alex's name, but he knows her grief for him, understands it because she told him, _I lost my partner_. She can feel his own grief, too, for his friends, for his _family,_ for Dante above all. Eyes still shut, she reaches out and rests a hand on his palm, and she can almost feel the warm moments of Dante in his life, the smiles and laughter and camaraderie approaching deep friendship, a brotherly love far too fleetingly kindled.

She squeezes his hand. He squeezes back, and she knows he can read her, too, and feel the aching hole where a speedster should be in her life.

Three crowd into it - four, if A.M. is to be included - but none of them are right. None of them are Alex.

But there was never a space for Cisco. She has traveled to dozens of Earths and never met someone with her abilities. For a time it was lonely, and then it was how nature worked, and finally, After Alex, it was simply all there was. Grieving for it was like regretting the transition from yesterday to tomorrow. Be perpetually lonely and die, or be perpetually lonely and survive. Those were her options.

Until Cisco.

She likes the thought of that. It feels like a flashpoint: her life approached its new unfathomable normal Until Cisco. She has survived her entire life up to this point and will continue to survive, outlive Cisco if she must, because that is who Cynthia Reynolds _is_.

But she likes that life After Alex isn't consigned to solitude.

It's an opportunity.

Cisco squeezes her hand, silently accepting the challenge. _I want to be part of your life._

Cindy replies, _I want to let you._

And so she does.


End file.
